One biographer of Gertrude described her own impressions of the city in the same period (the late 1800s), when for the first time she visited an aunt who lived there: The district round Middlesbrough and Tees side to the sea was caked with grime…For twenty miles the air smelt of chemicals and ash and soot, as the crowded houses smelt of cabbage, cheese and cat. Basements…were covered with black, gluey mud whenever it rained.’ The term ‘day-darkness’ was coined to describe the smog of industry; and in particular, Middlesbrough and Cleveland were said by a contemporary to succeed in almost excluding daylight from the district.
Daughter of the Desert. The Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell.
Georgina Howell. 2007
The Smell of Water 